Companies bringing flash memory technology to computer rooms have been consolidating rapidly. To get a real sense of the activity, though, it helps to read documents filed this week in connection with SanDisk’s $1.3 billion deal to buy Fusion-io.

One filing shows that Fusion-io talked to 11 potential acquirers between late October and May, as the Salt Lake City company pondered its future among rapid changes in the data storage market. Read More »

Many people’s image of the Consumer Electronics Show boils down to booths full of big TVs and other gadgets, with the occasional squad of both babes in small costumes. But it’s worth remembering that the really important action happens in private rooms away from the limelight. Read More »

Big tech companies frequently learn they don’t have all the good ideas, but their money can provide a window into innovations at startups. SanDisk is the latest example.

The company, known for chips and other products that use flash memory technology, on Thursday is announcing a $75 million venture fund to make equity investments that advance SanDisk’s strategic interests. Its first move is joining a new funding round for WhipTail, a New Jersey startup selling systems that use flash technology to store data from server systems.

WhipTail, which was founded in 2007, says the new $31 million infusion comes from a group that includes traditional venture capital firms as well as “an unnamed Silicon Valley industry titan,” in addition to SanDisk. Read More »

SanDisk and Toshiba make flash-memory chips at two jointly owned factories in Japan, which were far enough away from the Mar. 11 earthquake to escape physical damage and also dodged the rolling blackouts that followed. But the companies still have had their share of power problems.

Bloomberg News

SanDisk noted Thursday that one of the factories suffered a power outage three days before the earthquake, for unrelated reasons. That factory was in the process of returning to normal output at the time of the quake, which temporarily disrupted operations at both factories, the company said.

Such interruptions are no joke–often causing companies to scrap partly processed silicon wafers and pay other costs to get production tools up and running again. SanDisk said during its earnings call that both factories had fully recovered by Mar. 13, but noted the disruptions will lead to a $25 million charge.

What makes the situation more unusual is that the same factories experienced a similar problem in December, when Toshiba said a split-second interruption in power effectively required the factories to reboot. SanDisk took an $18 million charge following that outage. Read More »

Many questions have been raised by consumers’ shifting focus to smartphones and tablet-style PCs. Sanjay Mehrotra seems to like answering them a bit more than Steve Luczo.

Seagate

Seagate’s new iPhone-sized hard drive

Luczo is CEO of Seagate, the big maker of computer disk drives. Mehrotra was recently given the top job at SanDisk, which holds a similarly strong position in the chip-based data-storage medium known as flash memory. They talked about their businesses during separate interviews at the Consumer Electronics Show.

Seagate’s revenue is greater than SanDisk’s. But the latter’s market capitalization is more than $12 billion, compared to less than $7 billion for Seagate. Read More »

Eli Harari is going out on a high note. The Israeli entrepreneur is giving up the CEO post at SanDisk after a quarter that illustrated consumers’ growing appetite for the flash memory chips it pioneered. And fears about flash hitting a technological dead end are premature, he is quick to add.

“Every time we get to what we think is a cliff, but then we see that there is some ground to go further,” says Harari, 65, who co-founded SanDisk in 1988.

The issue is the limits of miniaturization. Manufacturers constantly race to squeeze more transistors and other components into the space available on silicon chips, both to improve attributes like data-storage capacity and lower the cost of production. That is getting more costly and difficult for all chip companies. Read More »